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February 9, 2015

Of Sea and Stone Blog Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Of Sea and Stone! Today I have an excerpt from the book to share with you - and don't forget to enter the giveaway! To follow the rest of the tour, click on the banner above.

Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis #1)

Author: Kate Avery Ellison

Genre: YA Fantasy

Release Date: February 2, 2014

Description:

All her life, clever Aemi has been a slave in the Village of the Rocks, a
place where the sea and sky meet. She’s heard the stories about the
fabled People of the Sea, a people who possess unimaginable technology
who live below the waves in the dark, secret places of the ocean. But
she never dreamed those stories were true.

When a ship emerges
from the ocean and men burn her village, Aemi is captured, and enslaved
below the waves in Itlantis, a world filled with ancient cities of glass
and metal, floating gardens, and wondrous devices that seem to work
magic. To make matters worse, her village nemesis, the stuck-up mayor’s
son Nol, was captured with her, and they are made servants in the same
household beneath the sea.

Desperate to be free, Aemi plots her
escape, even going so far as to work with Nol. But the sea holds more
secrets than she realizes, and escape might not be as simple as leaving…

The wind fanned my face. I stopped at the edge of the water and shaded my eyes against the glaring sun.Someone else was on the Looking Rock. I saw a figure moving around the pool. Confound that Old One and his stories! I splashed into the water, my heart pounding as I swam hard, kicking my legs. I reached the rock and hauled myself up, hair dripping, leaving wet footprints as I ran to the tide pools. A young man stood at the edge of the pool, his feet hanging in the water, his arms braced behind him and his face tipped toward the sun. He was lounging, waiting for me, stretched out as if to show off his physical perfections and the gold bracelets on his arms and ankles. That handsome, arrogant face, smirking mouth, and long, dark lashes that contrasted with his pale, wavy hair—I’d know him anywhere.Nol.I looked past him into the water and stopped in horror.The creature was gone.My bag of sad little fish lay at the edge of the rock, looking deflated in the sunlight. My spear lay beside it.Fury built up at the back of my neck and swept through my throat to take hold of my tongue. Anger licked at my bones.“You stole my catch.”Nol opened one eye and looked at me. “What are you talking about? Your bag of fish is right there. I didn’t touch it.”“No. The creature in the pool—it was my catch. I found it first, as was clearly demonstrated by my spear marking the pool. You took it! Where did you put it?” I was furious, devastated.Nol straightened and blinked at me. His smile was slow and smooth, like butter being spread across bread.“It wasn’t your fish,” he said. “It wasn’t in your net, so you had no claim.”“I marked it with my spear—”“You aren’t a fisherman, thrall-girl. The rules of the village don’t apply to the likes of you. You have no identifying marker that deserves to be honored, and that thing you call a spear is simply a piece of garbage with a point at one end. It could have washed into the pool on its own, for all I know.”I wanted to strangle him. My anger was hot and fierce, and it made my legs tremble. But he was the mayor’s second son, and he could do as he liked. Instead, I bit my tongue and turned away.I’d lost this round, but I would not lose to Nol again.

I’ve been making up stories since I was five years old, and
now I’m thrilled to be able to do it as a full-time job. I have an
obsession with dark fantasy, dystopian futures, and Pride and
Prejudice-style love stories full of witty banter and sizzling, unspoken
feelings. When I’m not writing, I’m creating digital art, reading funny
blogs, or watching my favorite shows (which include TVD and BSG). I
live with my geeky husband and our two bad cats in Atlanta, GA.